Lesson: Defining Success across Audiences

Contributed by Elizabeth Alexander, 2014 Goals: To identify audience needs and revise writing accordingly Engage in self-assessment and self-critique for more effective communication with different audiences When to use this: In a unit in which students must revise a piece using a different mode and/or for a different audience Prior Class: Ask students to bring …

Lesson: The Rhetoric of Comedy

Contributed by Craig Sanders, 2015 Summary: This lesson makes use of the medium of stand-up comedy to help students to understand and rationalize rhetorical argument and its strategies in new ways. By analyzing and demonstrating the rhetorical strategies associated with humor, students build connections with a different mode of discourse and are able to apply …

Lesson: Sentence Competition

Contributed by Natalie Taylor, 2015   Sentence Competition   Summary: The class is split into two teams for a semester-long competition to create stronger, more argumentative sentences.   Description: Throughout the semester, I collect a number of sentence-level issues that students are having. These issues range from grammatical problems, such as comma splices and subject-verb …

Prompt: Museum of the North and Representations of the Sublime

    Contributed by Jen Schell   The Museum of the North and  Representations of the Sublime Many Alaskan artists–poets, painters, sculptors, photographers–have attempted to capture the sublime in their work. Put more simply, they have tried to represent in an artistic form the special and awe-inspiring qualities of life in Alaska. Other artists prefer …

Lesson: Entering the Conversation

  Entering the Conversation Activity I. In class discussion, we choose a sample “hot’ controversial research topic, such as abortion (easy to demonstrate), and then brainstorm terms to use for searching for sources. Then, we look at common terms that come up during a simple Google search of “abortion.’ Motherhood, person, moral, freedom, murder, etc. …

Lesson: Audiences and Rhetorical Situations

  Learning to recognize, consider, and research Different Rhetorical Situations and Audiences  Context activity: recognizing that a conversation is going on For the first unit, we read six authors with varying stances on a particular theme. Students read a pair of authors for each class period, with opposing viewpoints on a particular issue within the …

Analysis Unit Plan: Gender and Disney

Goals: To better understand the nature of analysis and how it pertains to everyday life. In this unit we will be discussing how the media – Disney in particular – perpetuates gender stereotypes and breaks gender stereotypes. This unit will include three short response essays and one final essay. Week 1: Reading: (Due Thursday) “Introduction: …

Handout: Questions to Ask When Reviewing/Revising an Essay

Is there a clearly stated purpose/objective? Are there effective transitions? How is this idea related to my thesis? How is this idea related to the ideas that come before and after it? Are the introduction and conclusion focused on the main point of the essay? As a reader, can you easily follow the writer’s flow …

Reflection Unit Plan: Into the Wild Movie Reflection

For our final, “Reflection” unit, I decided to pair watching a movie with a low-key writing assignment in my class. I chose Into the Wild  because 1) I think it is great 2) Alaskan students generally have a lot to say about it 3) students can relate to the main character, which makes for good …

Handout: How to Write an Abstract

    This handout is attributed to Philip Koopman, of Carnegie Mellon University. A link to his text can be found here:  https://www.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/essays/abstract.html. It is also copied below:   Because on-line search databases typically contain only abstracts, it is vital to write a complete but concise description of your work to entice potential readers into …

Lesson: Use Your Senses, An Introduction to Observation

Introduction to Observation activity: Use your senses! 1. (10-15 minutes) Choose a short piece of writing that features sensory details. I chose the first chapter of “We the Animals’ by Justin Torres (it’s one of my favorite books!) Read the piece aloud in class. I read the piece to my students so that they could …